


No Other Way Than This

by elliebird



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: M/M, Making Out, Oral Sex, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:20:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25234552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliebird/pseuds/elliebird
Summary: My take on a little after-fight care between my favorite immortals.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 39
Kudos: 519





	No Other Way Than This

**Author's Note:**

> Writing in a new fandom is scary. This is a short little something to push past the paralyzing self-doubt.
> 
> Title from Pablo Neruda's Sonnet XVII because why the heck not.

_How many times have they been here before?_

The circumstances are different. Familiar locations in a new century, same year new safe house. Variables shifting, morphing, but the ritual is the same. 

The flat has belonged to them since the reign of King George II, adapting to modernity, miraculously surviving the Blitz. Neither of them particularly care for London but they hold onto the place for the same sentimentality that keeps them returning to Malta, the reason they still carry the weapons they used the first and subsequent times they failed to kill each other. 

Joe disappears as soon as the door shuts behind the four of them, back into the depths of the flat and the bathroom with the pipes that rattle and water pressure that works on its own terms. 

Nicky doesn’t join Joe until he’s shown Nile to a bed, and triple checked that if she needs anything, she’ll come and find him. 

Joe’s stripped to his waist, his shirt discarded and his feet bare, when Nicky steps wordlessly into the bathroom. 

Joe looks at him and the space in his ribcage settles. It doesn’t make any difference how many battles and wars they’ve lived through. Nine hundred years later, they still look to each other for solace. 

Nicky lets the door close quietly behind him. He has blood and other matter clinging to his hair, his skin, the collar of his shirt. Joe can’t bear it a second longer. The bone-deep terror of that eternal minute after Nicky ate bullet, before he came gasping back to life, still sits heavy in the pit of his stomach. 

Joe reaches for the hem of Nicky’s ruined shirt and pulls it over his head. Out of habit, he runs his palms over Nicky’s skin, tracing planes of muscle he’s long since memorized. Nicky is alright. He has proof of it here before him, all of Nicky beautifully on display for his inspection. Yet there’s a compulsive need to double and triple check, cover the place where Nicky’s heart beats with his palm. 

Nicky leans his cheek against Joe’s shoulder. He settles a hand at the small of Joe’s back, reassuring through touch and presence that they are whole and living. 

Joe kisses his temple, his lips to blood-stained skin. It might take longer than this. Days, maybe, weeks, to shake the ghost of fear living inside of him. 

They’ve been here before. 

In the beginning, after learning that they were meant for each other - that for as long as he lived, Joe would love Nicky like no other - he’d find himself frantic with fear that it would all be swept away, pulled out from beneath him without warning. Nicky has always settled him. Nicky had faith, faith that whatever had brought them together - God or fate - would _keep_ them together. 

Their immortality does not make them immune to the seconds and minutes of fear before wounds begin to heal, breathing returns to normal and they come to life. 

They rid themselves of their remaining clothing. Joe catches Nicky by the hand and backs him up, guiding him to rest his weight against the small pedestal sink. 

He cups Nicky’s face between blood-stained palms. He’s lovely. For the billions of minutes he’s spent looking upon Nicky, he still can’t get his fill. He has committed to memory the prominent slant of his nose, the line of his jaw, the blue of his eyes. He has devoted pages, filled books, with sketches of Nicky. In profile, asleep with his lips parted, naked and aroused. 

Nicky exhales, shoulders dropping, letting Joe look, letting him see for himself that his love still lives, his skin warm beneath his own, proof of life in the flush of his cheeks and the beat of his pulse. 

Nicky is indulging, for now. It’s telling, proof that Nicky too is shaken by the events of the last few days, by Andy’s mortality and Booker’s betrayal. He wraps his fingers around Joe’s wrist, tilting his chin. Joe obliges him with a careful, searching kiss. 

“Joe,” Nicky breathes out. “Please. I’m fine.” 

Nicky doesn’t know how to be anything but honest with Joe. But selfishly, this is for Joe. Allowing himself a tender moment in the midst of chaos, after the violence and destruction at Merrick, is a reminder of how lucky they are to live and breathe. He’ll be revisiting that moment, Nicky with a gun in his mouth, for months, years, decades. The agonizing seconds of fear, watching Nicky die so soon after learning of Andy’s mortality. 

For all the thousands of times they have been here before, post-battle, this one is different. This time, the oldest among them is mortal, tucked into bed for rest and healing. This time, a gun splattered Nicky’s blood and brain matter feet from him. This time, Joe hovered for a breathless, agonizing minute before Nicky came gasping awake. 

Now, when Joe kisses Nicky again, he isn’t careful. He’s demanding, hungry, seeking proof that for all that’s changed, _this_ is still his. 

Nicky breathes into his mouth. He tugs him close with a hand in his waistband and opens to Joe. 

There’s a metallic sting to the taste of Nicky’s lips. This, too, is ritualistic. Familiar. Joe groans. He drinks from Nicky’s mouth, hot and hungry for him like it’s the first time. He cups Nicky’s jaw and teases him into letting him taste him from the inside. 

They are at once familiar with each other and as thrilled as if it were new all over again. 

One kiss becomes a dozen until Joe has lost sense of time, of place, of anything but Nicky’s lovely, lush mouth. 

Eventually, the need to get clean, a desire for an orgasm and food win out. “Vieni,” he says against Nicky’s lips. 

They climb into the shower, just barely big enough for two. Joe turns the water on, reaching fo Nicky as it begins to flow with a sputter, coming to life. Nicky has a fondness for shower sex that even decades after the thrill of discovery still turns Joe on. 

“Girati,” Joe urges quietly and Nicky turns to face the rush of water, his back to Joe. He bows his head as if in invocation and submits to Joe’s hands on his skin, in his hair, letting the blood wash away. He kisses the places his fingers touch. A scar on Nicky’s shoulder from before his first death. The constellation of moles between his shoulder blades. The spot beneath his ear that still makes Nicky’s breath catch. 

When the physical reminders have been swept down the drain, Joe backs Nicky against the wall and falls gracelessly to his knees. He worships at the altar of his love, his heart, his being. He trails teasing kisses up the inside of Nicky’s thigh where he’s vulnerable, retraces memories they’ve made before. 

Nicky pushes a hand into Joe’s hair, tugging with the sort of selfishness he reserves for sex. He takes what he wants because he can, because Joe loves nothing as much as he loves Nicky taking what he wants. Joe looks up at him from his knees, from between Nicky’s thighs with water pouring down on him and feels at once powerful and helpless in the face of Nicky’s eye’s on him, his reverence. 

Joe wraps a palm around himself. He’ll come just like this, with the weight of Nicky heavy on his tongue, stretching his lips until his jaw aches. He strokes himself as he flattens his tongue and traces the hard length of Nicky’s pretty pink cock, already dripping slick. He licks at Nicky’s fingers where they’re curled around the base, holding himself in offering for Joe. 

When Nicky’s had enough teasing, he tightens his fingers in Joe’s wet curls and guides Joe where he wants him. 

Joe takes Nicky into his mouth and takes his time with it. He knows all the many ways to make Nicky come with his mouth. When the adrenaline is running high and they’re frantic, he hollows his cheeks, fuck two fingers into Nicky’s tight, clenching heat until he’s coming hard in no time. When they’ve woken in the middle of the night, reaching for each other, Nicky likes it languid, slow and careful. He likes to be kept on edge for agonizing minutes, sometimes hours, shaking and jerking through it when Joe finally lets him come. 

For now, he keeps a consistent rhythm as Nicky sets the pace with his hand in Joe’s hair and the other on his cock, demanding and hungry, unapologetic. 

“Joe,” is the only warning before the familiar taste of Nicky’s come floods his tongue, the back of his throat. Joe takes it unflinchingly, centuries of practice, but still he groans, still his balls tighten and he spills all over his hand as Nicky shakes, pulling at Joe’s hair to ease up. 

Nicky pulls Joe to his feet before either of them have recovered. He spins Joe to pin him to the wall, catching his chin in one had. Joe groans when Nicky licks at the seam of his mouth. His cock drips with his own release, still twitching when Nicky takes the taste of himself from Joe’s mouth. 

Joe wants to stay this way. Here with Nicky, anything feels possible. The world has ceased to exist. All that matters is their shared heartbeat. He eases the kiss down a notch, then two. They’ve indulged themselves long enough. They’ll do it all again later, and then again. For now, food beckons, as does their team. Their family.

He kisses the corner of Nicky’s mouth, the tip of his chin, and shuts the water off.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. I'm on [Tumblr](https://elliebirdthings.tumblr.com/).


End file.
